***Don’t you hate fucking Halloween? German chancellor Angela Merkel may be pissed of the with the US National Security Agency tapping her phone – have you seen Homeland? These guys are out of control, but an even worse thing that America has inflicted on the rest of the world is Halloween.

Here’s an ad from Publicis Kaplan Thaler for Procter & Gamble’s Crest and Oral-B toothpastes, securing a connection with the horrible Halloween. And it’s a huge hit in the States. C’mon guys, we didn’t suffer 2000 years of blood-soaked Western history to end up here.

*** There’s quite an interesting agency in London called Connect, which seems to specialise in car accounts and, as you’d expect I suppose, was originally based in the car manufacturing home territory of the Midlands. Anyway, it’s beefing up its London presence and has hired new ‘head of insight’ Guy Bevan from Karmarama.

Back in the day, when the UK made stuff, there used to be quite a successful Midlands agency called Cogent Elliot, which is still with us I believe. It would be good to see a revival from agencies based outside London, on real businesses.

***My spies tell me that some of the Expedia ads (left) that won big in the Campaign Big Awards were doctored: not by very much but enough to make them more appealing. I’ve looked at some of these and, frankly, I can’t really tell the difference. But, make the client’s logo smaller and you stand a better chance of appealing to an audience of your peers.

Ogilvy won the big agency of the year, or some such, at the Campaign awards for Expedia and others. And, of course, swept the board at Cannes last year. Is there some funny business going on? I think we should be told.

*** This is supposed to be a Burger King commercial (not the other one) from somewhere. Who said creativity was dead?

About Stephen Foster

Stephen is a former editor of Marketing Week and London Evening Standard advertising columnist. He wrote City Republic for Brand Republic and is a partner in communications consultancy The Editorial Partnership.

One comment

America celebrates Halloween ‘cos they only get two weeks hols a year (and some people don’t even take both of those.) At Halloween they go to work dressed as a fucking witch or a mime, they think they are on holiday… They are not… They are still at fucking work. I get very stroppy when I go in the bank to plead for an overdraft and have to do it with a fucking Vampire!
Cheers/George